“Saturday Night Live”has drawn praise for an episode (hosted by the “Gossip Girl” star Blake Lively) that opened with a satire on Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the Virginia couple accused of crashing President Obama’s first state dinner. But the show took criticism for a skit that tweaked Tiger Woods and the speculation about marital difficulties between him and his wife, Elin, since his car accident late last month.
In the comedy sketch, Tiger Woods (played by the “S.N.L.” performer Kenan Thompson) gives a series of press conferences attempting to apologize for acts of infidelity. In each appearance, the fictional Woods appears with more bruises and injuries, evidently sustained at the hands of Elin (played in the skit by Ms. Lively).
Around the blogosphere, viewers wondered if “Saturday Night Live” went too far in mining comedy from the subject of domestic abuse — particularly when the show’s musical guest was Rihanna, who in February was assaulted by her then-companion, Chris Brown.
On the Web site TVSquad.com, Annie Wu wrote:
It’s another one of those strange double standard things; had the tables been turned and a man was suspected of beating up his wife, there definitely wouldn’t be a lighthearted sketch like this. But since it’s female-on-male domestic violence, our current culture deems it kind of, sort of O.K. to make fun of and the scandal had to be addressed before it lost heat. I don’t know, it’s touchy ground. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it if Rihanna wasn’t the musical guest.
The Web site Popeater.com was less ambivalent about the sketch, writing: “We think, had the genders been reversed, ‘SNL’ wouldn’t make light of the potentially violent situation — and with Rihanna on board, we wonder if a domestic violence gag was in especially poor taste.”
And Jezebel.com called the skit one of the night’s “obvious missteps,” adding sarcastically that the sketch was “a classy move when you consider that Rihanna was the night’s musical guest.”
What do you think? Is there a double standard at work in the “Saturday Night Live” skit? Should “S.N.L.” have avoided the subject because Rihanna was a guest, or should they have stayed away from it in all circumstances? Post a comment below and let us know.
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